


we’re only liars, but we’re the best

by elliebell (Naladot)



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Insecurity, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-08 05:28:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19864261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/elliebell
Summary: An interesting factoid that never quite makes the cut as an interview topic:Brian is Jae’s best friend. Jae isn’t Brian’s.





	we’re only liars, but we’re the best

**Author's Note:**

> Written for JYP Jukebox Round One for the song “Our lawyer made us change the name of this song so we wouldn’t get sued” by Fall Out Boy.
> 
> This is just fiction!

An interesting factoid that never quite makes the cut as an interview topic:

Brian is Jae’s best friend. Jae isn’t Brian’s.

Not that it really matters—after all, Jae has friends. Jae has lots of friends. Maybe Jae never had a  _ best _ friend, but maybe that’s cheesy anyway, a term meant to be left in middle school.

It’s not like he sits around thinking about it—or like, _ pining _ —but it’s just a fact. A bit of information he’s got in his back pocket, jabbing into his back whenever he sits down. A reminder not to get too comfortable.

And sure, maybe he had a moment once or twice after the fights were fought out and the jealousy successfully buried, when he turned to Brian to ask for help with a tricky translation and found Brian already about to speak the very word, and Jae thought,  _ this is my person, my best friend. _

But it doesn’t matter, because after all, Jae has never expected to be the best.

  
  
  


Success looks good on Brian. He walks a little taller, smiles a little easier, talks a little louder in the company building when they go back to the practice room after dark. These are just things Jae notes absently, demarcating the lines between his band members: Sungjin craves success, Wonpil is almost unaffected by it, Dowoon is in awe of it, and Brian—well, Brian just seems like he had it coming to him all along.

As for Jae himself, well. He figures he’d better sit in gratitude, supplicated before it, because Lord knows if you make success your goal, it’s gonna come right back around to smite you.

(There’s a chance Jae is a pessimist, in spite of his best efforts not to be.)

Brian dumps his bag on the couch in their practice room and turns in a smooth motion to grin back at Jae, some kind of glimmer in his eyes, like deep down he’s secure in this moment, certain that the world spinning around them has come to put Day6 right in the eye of the storm for a reason, and he doesn’t need to fear it coming to an end.

“Were you invited to that thing tonight?” Brian asks.

Jae searches his mental files and turns up nothing, and shrugs his shoulders. He’s been excluded from plenty of things before, so he’s got the unbothered shoulder shrug perfected. “Uh, no? What thing?”

“Like—the thing. With that guy? He’s from LA, too. Anyway, you should just go with me.”

For the first time in—well, ages—Jae hears something like insecurity in the timbre of Brian’s voice. And he remembers that Brian’s English has atrophied, and it’s a sore spot for him, and for the first time in a hell of a long time, Jae has something Brian needs.

“Yeah, sure,” Jae says, with an expert shoulder shrug. “I can go.”

  
  
  


Jae lands right on the border of the extrovert/introvert line whenever he takes the Myers-Briggs test, but the moment he and Brian arrive at a fancy house in Hannam for the party, Jae feels the scale slide firmly down to  _ introvert. _

“Be cool,” Brian says.

Jae bristles at the implication, but only says, “It’s just a party.” Cue shoulder shrug. He’s got to add to his nonchalant body language repertoire ASAP.

He’s been to plenty of parties before, and his parents would probably be considered wealthy—though not exorbitantly so, but still—but even by the people standing outside as they walk up to the house, Jae can tell this is a party about  _ connections.  _ The kind of place where Brian thrives and Jae, generally, does not. He casts a sideways glance at Brian and finds him still wearing that expression he’s had all day—content. Arrived. Self-actualized. At least that makes one of them.

The inside of the house is smoky, heavy with the scent of cigarettes and alcohol. Jae’s eyes immediately start to water and he follows Brian through the crowd, stopping with him to say hi to Jinyoung and Jackson in one room (Jinyoung says hi to Jae and then promptly ignores him; Jackson doesn’t even seem to register his being there, which could be because he’s drunk but it’s also typical, and also Jae doesn’t care) and then Nayeon and one of their record producers in the next room, and in one room he spots some BTS members laughing but Brian doesn’t stop there (only Wonpil, really, is all that good at networking among them, and he’s not here, and Brian is probably starting to regret his choice of bandmate companion.)

They finally arrive in the room where Brian’s investor friend is standing in the center of a crowd. The friend greets Brian, Brian gives an expert bro-hug, and Jae feels himself fade right away to invisible.

It’s not his best moment, but when Brian isn’t looking, he turns around and walks right out the door, and he doesn’t stop walking until he’s on the subway back home, when he finally stands in the silence, and remembers how to breathe.

  
  
  


“Hey.”

Brian opens the door to Jae’s room without knocking. Jae really needs to remember to use the lock. It’s three AM, not nearly as late as Jae would have predicted Brian would be home.

“So, you ditched me,” Brian says. “What the fuck.”

Jae sighs and pauses his game. “It wasn’t really my scene.”

He looks back and finds Brian just staring at him. How is he supposed to make Brian understand a lifetime of being the rejected kid, and how it still feels like a splinter lodged under his skin, a pain never escaped and only mitigated? He can’t, and as he gets older, he finds himself more and more reluctant to try.

“I asked you to come with me—”

“Yeah? But you didn’t really remember I was there.”

“I don’t  _ get you _ ,” Brian says. There’s a judgment barbed in there. Jae hears it. 

“Never said you had to,” Jae returns.

Brian walks away, his footsteps echoing down the hall. And Jae has no idea what the hell just happened.

  
  
  


When they were younger, back as trainees, Jae and Brian hated each other. It was simple: Jae was better at guitar, so Brian didn’t like him. Brian was better at being a popular human, so Jae didn’t like him. Fun times.

They resolved it because—well, actually, a lot of it was Brian. Brian seeking out Jae to practice with, wanting to improve. Brian asking Jae if he felt out of place with the language and culture, and trying to help. Brian inviting him out for meals and walking beside him quietly along the city streets, steady. Just—steady.

But there’s an imbalance in that.

  
  
  


Jae buys Brian’s breakfast and coffee the next morning as an apology, and by lunchtime, the argument is forgotten. They go back to the status quo.

And when they pick up the phone to do an interview with a magazine in the US, Jae is shocked to hear the interviewer ask, “so, would you consider the members of your band to be your friends?”

Jae looks up at Brian, who gives an encouraging smile. “Yeah,” Jae says. “Best friends.”

end.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my friend Reet for the 6 AM read-through!!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [technically (this is reality)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19938391) by [bitsori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitsori/pseuds/bitsori)




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